SPIN METER: Legislation inflation grips GOP
WASHINGTON — Republicans love to get their hands on the Democrats' health care legislation. They show it to the cameras at every opportunity, even piling one version on top of another…
WASHINGTON — Republicans love to get their hands on the Democrats' health care legislation. They show it to the cameras at every opportunity, even piling one version on top of another to make a big pile look even bigger.Although they complain they don't have time to read all of it, they found the time to tape it together, page by page, so they could roll it up the steps of the Capitol like super-sized toilet paper and show how very long it is.It surely is long. But, no, not longer than "War and Peace," as they claim.No one really expects brevity when reinventing something as complex and huge as the nation's health insurance system, which accounts for one-sixth of the economy. Indeed, legislation of comparable size was used to redefine an area of much more limited federal responsibility, education. That was the No Child Left Behind Act from the agenda of Republican President George W. Bush.Size only matters in the health care debate because Republicans have turned the length of the legislation into a symbol: Big, unwieldy bill means big, overreaching government. Even bigger when you display double-spaced copies with double-wide margins and large print.As if he risked a hernia carrying it any other way, Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa was seen hoisting such a copy of the House Democratic bill on his shoulder, the package trussed in a sturdy rope. GOP Rep. John Culberson of Texas brought a copy to a Capitol Hill rally and threw its loose pages to the crowd, like meat to lions.During the weekend vote to bring the Senate health bill to full debate, five Republican senators displayed the massive legislation on their desks and one of them, Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, piled the House and Senate bills together to represent a nightmarishly bureaucratic double-whammy.The actual bill, which Senate Majority Leader Harry introduced last week, came in at 2,074 double-spaced pages, 84 more pages than the House version, which was already being ridiculed for its size."That's larger than the novel 'War
last modification 2009-11-24 10:00:23
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